A youth-movie , tho not for the very young: Occasionally pretty scary. With a few scary adults ( like the dog-trainer, with his hoodie and sunglasses after dark) , some coarse language("pichabo this" "pichabo that" ,however it didn't come through in the Dutch subtitles ( aimed at children?)) , a small bag probably containing some kind of drugs but hardly visible and , as befits youth-movies , puzzles which are not explained, like: Who was the dead person from whom Lili took the ringing phone out of his pocket ? How did her father escape the closed cell at the slaughterhouse where he locked himself in to find a fire-thrower,not to mention what is a fire-thrower doing in a slaughterhouse? And why is the movie called White God?
The acting of dogs is ,for a youth-movie, acceptable, but you can easily guess there is somebody on the set telling them what to do. They look around all the time. Besides that, most of them do not look evil at all. Especially in one close-up where you see the main dog, Hagen, showing his teeth a few times. Just a friendly dog, told to show his teeth. Add some growling to the audio-track and you've got whole school-classes in shock and awe.
Social references I could not find. Although I was hoping for one when the dog was helped while on the run for the dogcatchers by a homeless person, but that hope was already destroyed within 10 seconds, making me even doubt the filmmaker's intentions, depicting a homeless as a mindless jerk selling the dog for a few bucks and a meal to a restaurant owner. That restaurant owner actually had a Bin Laden poster on one wall.Why? (No one knows...yet another puzzle,a mystery, not to be solved, or even taken notice of.) Or....on the other hand.....did I just mention two examples in the movie of hidden mainstream Hungarian prejudices against homeless people and non-western restaurant owners? I hope I'm wrong.
Also very strange , and IMHO useless and kinda cheapo , is that the opening-sequence of the movie is actually a direct copy a sequence near the end of the movie, although never in the movie we 'went back in time' or experienced any other kind of flashback story-telling. My guess is that the director did that to give the producers a good feeling at the beginning of the movie, so that they don't have to watch the entire movie, since they usually never do. Us, movie-goers, just have to understand and accept that.
Here in Holland 'White God' has been promoted as "Ominous like Hitchcock's 'The Birds', but with dogs instead!' Forget it. It is what I just overheard during the end-titles someone in a row in front of me whispering to the person next to her: "..Disney...".
The acting of dogs is ,for a youth-movie, acceptable, but you can easily guess there is somebody on the set telling them what to do. They look around all the time. Besides that, most of them do not look evil at all. Especially in one close-up where you see the main dog, Hagen, showing his teeth a few times. Just a friendly dog, told to show his teeth. Add some growling to the audio-track and you've got whole school-classes in shock and awe.
Social references I could not find. Although I was hoping for one when the dog was helped while on the run for the dogcatchers by a homeless person, but that hope was already destroyed within 10 seconds, making me even doubt the filmmaker's intentions, depicting a homeless as a mindless jerk selling the dog for a few bucks and a meal to a restaurant owner. That restaurant owner actually had a Bin Laden poster on one wall.Why? (No one knows...yet another puzzle,a mystery, not to be solved, or even taken notice of.) Or....on the other hand.....did I just mention two examples in the movie of hidden mainstream Hungarian prejudices against homeless people and non-western restaurant owners? I hope I'm wrong.
Also very strange , and IMHO useless and kinda cheapo , is that the opening-sequence of the movie is actually a direct copy a sequence near the end of the movie, although never in the movie we 'went back in time' or experienced any other kind of flashback story-telling. My guess is that the director did that to give the producers a good feeling at the beginning of the movie, so that they don't have to watch the entire movie, since they usually never do. Us, movie-goers, just have to understand and accept that.
Here in Holland 'White God' has been promoted as "Ominous like Hitchcock's 'The Birds', but with dogs instead!' Forget it. It is what I just overheard during the end-titles someone in a row in front of me whispering to the person next to her: "..Disney...".